Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,433 posts.
In the middle of the 1980s, Apple found itself with several options regarding the future of its computing platforms. The Apple II was the company’s bread and butter. The Apple III was pitched as an evolution of that platform, but was clearly doomed due to hardware and software issues. The Lisa was expensive and not…
There are significant changes happening in distributed systems.
I’ve been reading Pearl’s Causal Inference in Statistics , and one of the exercises poses this problem:
Today we're running Apache NuttX RTOS inside a Web Browser. What if we could compile and test NuttX Apps in the Web Browser? Let's explore with TCC 64-bit RISC-V Compiler, compiled to WebAssembly with Zig Compiler.
As we approach the final release date for Python 3.13, I’ve seen an uptick in discussion regarding 3.13’s introduction of an optional GIL. While removing the GIL has been a long time coming for the average user (I’ve dreamt of this for nearly 20 years), there have actually been two concurrent efforts to improve…
This thoroughly revised guide demonstrates how the flexibility of the command line can help you become a more efficient and productive data scientist. You’ll learn how to combine small yet powerful command-line tools to quickly obtain, scrub, explore, and model your data. To get you started, author Jeroen Janssens…
This is a follow-up to my blog post Updating from macOS Ventura to Sonoma silently enables iCloud Keychain . In the addendum to that blog post, I discussed a workaround, which was to delete my WiFi password right before rebooting into the updater. In a trial run on my M1 Mac mini, the workaround was successful.
Taking a closer look at the opening act of a glioblastoma diagnosis.
Lisp lets programs define new setf forms for assignment. The most common example is from CLOS , where a class like this:
We recently made a Polylog video about a nonstandard way of understanding the P vs NP problem. As usual, our goal was to present an underrated idea in a broadly understandable way, while being slig…
Building Surfgrad, a high-performant, WebGPU-powered autograd library
Can you imagine using a keyboard where it took a key press two seconds to show up on screen? That’s the typical latency for most voice interfaces, so it’s no wonder they’ve failed…
databases plus wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff
You might think it’s unlikely for any interesting mathematics to arise from incense appreciation, but that’s only because you’re unfamiliar with the peculiar character of Muromachi (室町) era Japanese nobles. There has never been a group of people, in any time or place, who were so driven to display their sophistication…
And What is Says About the Institutional Problems in American Cities & Infrastructure
Handling errors in Go is simple and flexible – yet no structure! It’s supposed to be simple, right? Just return an error , wrapped with a message, and move on. Well, that simplicity quickly turns into chaotic as our codebase grows with more packages, more developers, and more “quick fixes” that stay there forever…
Apple’s M2 chip uses a newer version of the CPU core instruction set. This increases its capability, thus how well it will cope with future apps and macOS, compared with the M1.
It was not easy or quick, and there were so many qualifiers that, for over a decade, I didn’t really think I “deserved” the label. But as I got older, those qualifiers started dropping off one by one, and today I’m convinced that I have perfect pitch. I describe my musical journey and thoughts on what perfect pitch…
Musings about async await again and why I think virtual threads
Las Vegas’ $2.3 billion immersive flagship takes a distressingly prophetic look inward.
An introduction to learned image compression using neural networks.
Duck Hunt is considered a classic of the Nintendo Entertainment System. But surprisingly, the concept of hunting ducks did not originate in 1984– people have...
Mobile before iOS and Android
Userspace wireguard is fun!
In 2019, Google and Cloudflare ran an experiment where they upgraded HTTPS for many "real users’ connections" to use post-quantum encryption. They then reported statistics on how affordable this was. Google had also run a similar experiment in 2016: "While it's still very early days for quantum computers, we're…
Embeddings encourage engineers to go full YOLO because it’s actually rewarding to do so!
1 sites already link to thisisalot.com, after 2 years online. Listed at $195 — keep the equity.
